There is a certain ancient method coming from Taoism to Zen -
- it can give you a very empty mind. If you just close your eyes and move your eyeballs, soon you will see you are getting dizzy just as the whirling Dervishes in Sufism get dizzy, just by whirling. But when the Sufi Dervish gets dizzy he starts feeling the center of the cyclone. His whole body is moving, but there is something at the very center which is unmoving -- that is his very being.

For Mevlana Jalaluddin Rumi it took thirty-six hours of continuous whirling. He went on and went on and went on. And that is the whole secret of it -- that you should not stop because you are feeling tired, you should go on and on till you fall. Not that you have to manage to fall, you just go on doing the whirling. A time is bound to come when you cannot manage not falling. You will fall down almost dead. I say almost -- the whole body is utterly tired. But there you can see the difference, because the whole body is so tired and so dead, it wants to go back to the earth just to rest. You will see inside you there is still a center full of light, full of energy, not tired at all. Contrast is needed to see that center.

Zen has a far more simple method. There is no need to stand and whirl. You just sit down and roll your eyes, your eyeballs, faster and faster, and soon you will see your whole head is whirling. A moment comes when this very whirling of the head inside gives you the passage which leads to your very center below your navel.

In Zen they call it hara -- it is your very life source. You must have heard that in Japan, suicide is called hara-kiri. If you push a knife in just two inches below your navel, it will hit the hara center which is your life source. So without a single drop of blood, the person dies because he has hit the life center and opened the door for life to fly out into existence. They have found the best method to commit suicide. But how did they find it? They found it through meditation. The same center is your birth, and the same center is your death.

So when you are whirling your head, you will find a passage which is not touched at all by your whirling -- either by whirling the body, or just by moving your eyeballs. Both do the same function -- you reach to your life center.